I ran my own small engineering company for 25 years. Projects ranged from $1ooK to $10M USD. We had no warranty claims at all. It takes a lot to produce software and hardware to that level of reliability.
Recently, someone posted on a different professional forum I am on "As a programmer I am faced with incompetence at every level. No one wants to put the time into making things great, just getting something out the door is the norm." I think that applies to a broad spectrum of products these days, and has applied for some time. A while back, I was participating in a cutting edge open source project. I commented on a design feature, supplying a schematic, simulation results, and references to various related technical specs. The reply from one of the "big" players was that he had not read those thousand pages of tech specs, but surely I was wrong. He even opined why, saying what he "thought" the tech specs must say. He got support from some of his pet squirrels. I dropped out of the project. This is not necessarily the norm...I'd like to think that it is a worst case. I know from personal experience that it takes a lot of time to understand a specific piece of hardware and its associated software. My company never went open source. I eventually closed it because I could not replace retiring professional staff from the current workforce. Not and keep the same level of quality. I don't have the Elecraft experience to speak knowledgeably about all these discussions, but I certainly understand the level of quality that I see, and understand the pressures of modern economics. I can't think of one open source, community-based product that I'd want to hang my hat on, even if I do see some that I'd support. I just don't see the professional depth in the general community. I'd actually vote in favor of opening the older Elecraft stuff up to community support, IF Elecraft went out of business or decided that some piece of gear is so old that it doesn't matter. (I actually own 2 pieces of gear that I'd love to see open source, but I don't see that happening.) Folks have invested a lot of $$ in their gear, and don't want to hear that 10 years later they need to toss it and buy new gear. ~R~ 72/73 de Rich NE1EE The Dusty Key On the banks of the Piscataqua On 2020-11-26 00:08:-0600, Tim Neu wrote: >The point on Moore's law is taken. > >But the options aren't just limited to Elecraft doing more work on older >radios or no updates at all (or supporting the old radios to the detriment >of the new) > >Many software development projects now are community based and although >radio firmware may be more time-consuming and more complex than OpenWRT for >example, community based development may have more umph than Elecraft might >have as far as inclination to tweak old radios. > >Just a thought. ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to arch...@mail-archive.com
